/proc/meminfo

Applications that perform a lot of memory accesses (several GBs) may obtain performance improvements by using large pages due to reduced Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) misses. HugeTLBfs is memory management feature offered in Linux kernel, which is valuable for applications that use a large virtual address space. It is especially useful for database applications such as MySQL, Oracle and others. Other server software that uses the prefork or similar (e.g. Apache web server) model will also benefit.

When it is time to upgrade the memory on a Linux host, it is important to understand the existing memory information of the system, which will help to plan the memory upgrade appropriately without opening server chassis (especially, when you have Linux rack mount server).

What is the current total RAM used in the system?

This can be obtained using free command or from the /proc/meminfo file as shown below. In this example, the current RAM is 1GB.# free Sample output:

How many memory slots are available for expansion?

References:

dmidecode can also be used to identify details about several other hardware related information. dmidecode command reads the systems DMI table for the hardware and BIOS information. DMI stands for Desktop Management interface and SMBIOS stands for System Management BIOS.